Olympus Has Fallen Made A Franchise But White House Down Didn’t, Why?

White House Down and Olympus Have Fallen came out simultaneously, but Olympus Has Fallen grew into a franchise while White House Down did not.

White House Down is an American action movie written by James Vanderbilt and directed by Roland Emmerich. The film stars Jamie Foxx, Channing Tatum, James Woods, and Richard Jenkins. The movie was released on 28 June 2013 by Sony Pictures. The movie was a box office flop and collected over $205 million against a $150 million budget.

The movie’s plot revolves around U.S. President James Sawyer (played by Jamie Foxx), who proposes to remove the military forces from the Middle East. On the other hand, divorced John Cale (played by Channing Tatum) works as a Capitol Police assigned as Speaker of the House Eli Raphelson (played by (Richard Jenkins). The story introduces lots of characters as it grows.

However, the film got an approval rating of 51% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 199 reviews with an average of 5.4/10. And on Metacritic, the film got an average score of 52 out of 100. One of the critics, Andrew Chan of the Film Critics Circle of Australia, writes that he is unsure whether he should be happy or sad that he laughed when someone got bombed or shot.

Three months before White House Down, the film Olympus Has Fallen. Antoine Fuqua directed the action thriller movie. He also wrote the screenplay with Katrin Benedikt and Creighton Rothenberger. The 2013 film was the first installment of the franchise and starred Aaron Eckhart, Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Cole Hauser, Melissa Leo, Robert Forster, and Dylan McDermott.

The movie collected a gross of $170.3 million against a budget of $70 million. It got mixed reviews from critics; however, Fuqua’s direction got a lot of praise. The plot of the movie follows the former US Army Special Forces soldier Mike Banning (played by Gerard Butler), is in a Secret Service and assigned to be the chief of U.S. presidential detail and maintaining the personal relationship with President Benjamin Asher, First Lady Margaret, and their son Connor.

The film got an approval rating of 49% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 192 reviews with an average of 5.39/10.

So the reason that Olympus Has Fallen made a franchise and White House Down has not because the previous one has collected more money. And White House Down was comparably disappointing.

The first sequel of Olympus Has Fallen, London Has Fallen, was released three years later, and it has performed better. The sequel also made a profit of $145 million with a gross collection of $205 million. However, the third franchise failed to impress and made only $40 million.

Olympus Has Fallen succeeded in launching the franchise, but the hopes of a sequel of White House Down evaporated as soon as it was released. There is no news to date that Emmerich has some plans regarding the franchise’s sequel. If White House Down performed better in the first project, Sony might have also thought of making White House Down 2.

Source: Olympus Has Fallen Made A Franchise But White House Down Didn’t, Why?